Hanahan, SC - A tornado with winds up to 85 miles per hour ripped through Hanahan Saturday night, damaging houses and toppling over power lines.

The hardest hit area was in the central part of town along Murray Drive, Recess Road, Lepley Road and Dennis Road.

The wild weather in Hanahan didn’t only damaged property and left people without power, but it nearly cost one woman her life.

Saturday night was full of dark clouds, thunder and lightning, but it was not just a summer storm.

“This place looked like a warzone Saturday night and even worse Sunday morning,” Tom Gause, who lives on Recess Road, said.

The National Weather Service (web | news) confirmed the storm produced a tornado.

“There’s nothing else that it could be,” Sheree Burris said.

Streets were lined with power lines and downed trees.

“I hope to have this taken care of today,” Jason Lawhon said of his oak tree that was damaged when his neighbor’s tree toppled over Saturday night. “I want to cut it up and haul it off.”

The worst damage was on Lepley Road.

Janice Metts was running errands that evening and decided to go home because of the downpour. Once inside the house, her giant oak fell on top of her 2005 Nissan Titan.

“The whole top of that tree came out and sat on top of the truck,” she described. “That was probably within 15 to 30 seconds of me getting out of it. It was pretty scary.”

Metts said she was frightened, but mostly she is relieved she wasn’t injured.

“I’m very blessed,” she added.

The clean up process is going very quickly and neighbors say they expect everything should be back to normal in the next few days.

Many people have already cut up the fallen trees, but they are waiting on the debris to be hauled away.

SCE&G says electricity has been restored to that area, but at the height of the storm more than 3,500 people were without power.

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